For years, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) imagined a vast, panoramic cycle of paintings expressing the "people's" American history; the dream became reality when the artist completed murals for the Indiana display at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.

Despite criticisms at the time that Benton's pioneer woman wasn't pretty enough and the pigs weren't of the best breed, the murals were installed at the new IU Auditorium in 1941, following their recovery by then-President Herman B Wells from obscurity in a horse barn at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. In a fundraiser Dec. 13 that will aid in the restoration of the historic murals and other IU Auditorium projects, Chicago Hope and The Princess Bride star Mandy Patinkin will perform in concert as a tribute to Wells. The lights go down at the IU Auditorium the next day, at which point the Auditorium will close for an extended renovation.

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16 'tuns' (of ginseng) and what'd ya get?

By Rose McIlveen

"You're living in the past" is a comment that can be rather uncomplimentary to some people, but Warren Roberts, professor emeritus of folklore at IU Bloomington, doesn't mind the accusation. The way Hoosiers lived during the pre-industrial years intrigues him, and he passes on what he has learned about Indiana folklife in a course he has taught through the School of Continuing Studies.

If students come to the class with misconceptions about what life was like in the early 1800s, they leave with a more realistic idea of the frontier.

People who should know better will tell you that the pioneer was a loner.

"It wasn't like that at all," Roberts said.

Hoosier pioneers tended to cluster together against harsh seasons.

He explained that pioneers came to the Indiana Territory in extended families -- 30, 40 or 50 in a group. The mythical loner like "Grizzly" Adams would have been considerably handicapped with a dull ax and no blacksmith shop nearby to sharpen his tools.

Roberts believes that the best way to find out about early Indiana life is to examine artifacts like houses, barns and implements.

Although there are surviving written records of pioneer life, Roberts is somewhat suspicious of such accounts.

"There is the writer who claimed that Daniel Boone eventually became very wealthy by selling ginseng. In reading a biography of Boone, I noticed it had said that he shipped 15 tons of ginseng up the river," said Roberts. "Fifteen tons of dried ginseng would be an incredible amount of ginseng."

He explained that what probably happened was that in looking at the handwritten material about Boone, the writer misinterpreted the word "tun," which was a barrel, for ton.

Another Boone legend is that he looked out of his isolated cabin one morning, saw some people settling nearby, exclaimed "Elbow room!" and moved farther west. The truth is that Boone was invited to Missouri by the Spanish government.

Roberts takes his class on field trips to look at folk crafts such as pottery, baskets and quilts. Then there are cemetery monuments carved to look like tree stumps and log houses. He talks about the migration of families to Indiana from the Eastern seaboard, particularly the Carolinas and Virginia. For those who came West, there was a window of opportunity as far as the seasons were concerned.

'The only viable time was the very late spring or very early summer. And if you add 2 1/2 months (for the migration), you have them getting here in the fall. They couldn't possibly have planted any crops, which they could harvest, and they certainly couldn't have cut any hay for the animals that they brought with them. They would have been totally dependent upon the people who were already here," explained Roberts."It (the community) was a mutual help organization."

Roberts is a native of Maine and was elected a fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1961.

Read about folklore as an intrinsic part of a liberal arts education at this Web site: